Description
First edition of Hunting Trips of a Ranchman by Theodore Roosevelt, known as The Medora Edition and limited to 500 copies.
Quarto, xvi, 318pp, [4]. Bound in the publisher’s three-quarter levant over marbled boards, title in gilt on spine, gilt-ruled bands with gilt decorations. Top edge gilt, laid-in silk bookmark, marbled endpapers. From the library of John Gerard Heckscher, with his bookplate on the front pastedown endpaper. Front hinge reinforced; no further archival restoration noted. Stamp of G.P. Putnam’s Sons on verso of front free endpaper. Complete with four India-proof impressions of etchings by R. Swain Gifford, seven Japan-proof impressions of drawings by J.C. Beard and twenty other full-page illustrated plates by A.B. Frost, Fannie E. Gifford and Henry Sandham. This Medora Edition was limited to 500 copies, this being number 373. (Cole & Vail, A6) (Howes R430) (Graf 3560) A scarce example of this edition.
The first edition of Hunting Trips of a Ranchman, known as The Medora Edition, was limited to 500 copies. There were a number of luxury editions offered for sale, including this copy in three quarter levant, which sold for $22.50. An edition in full seal sold for $27.50, full polished levant for $32.00 and olive crushed levant for $75.00. Roosevelt himself contributed $5,000 towards the publication of this work, but sales were not strong, and he did not recoup his investment until many years later.
